by Carrie Quest
Maybe two more times, just to be sure.
“That’s a bad idea,” he warns.
“I don’t care.” My voice is raw, all trace of teasing gone. I don’t care anymore. I love him. I want him. He’s in my bed and I will deal with any consequences that come if it means I can have his lips on mine and feel him inside me again.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Really sure?”
“Fuck, yes,” I say loudly, and he laughs. He rolls to his back and pulls me on top of him, running his hands down my sides to my ass and pressing me close as I roll my hips and grind against him.
“Fuck, Piper. Kiss me.”
I drop an openmouthed kiss on his neck and swirl my tongue around. Hmmm. Definite notes of lust here with a firm and very rigid hint of fuck-me-now. If he were wine, I’d order a case to be delivered every week and drink the lot. Hell, I’d fill a swimming pool and drown in him.
I lick my way up his neck and I’m millimeters away from finally finally feeling his lips on mine, when there’s a knock on the door.
“Piper?”
We both freeze and the doorknob rattles.
“Piper, are you in there? Why is this door locked?”
Fuck all the ducks. It’s my mother.
“Piper? Can you come out here, please?”
And my father. Shit.
“Coming!” I yell.
“Not anymore,” Adam mumbles. His tone is grumpy, but his eyes are crinkled up with laughter. I roll off him so fast that I can’t stop myself and hit the floor with a loud thump.
“Cripes, Peanut! Do you need me to break down the door?”
“It’s fine, Dad.” I spit hair out of my mouth and search frantically for clothes.
“Are you really all right, Piper?” my mom asks.
“Yes, Mom. It was just Chuckles. I’m getting dressed, okay? I’ll be right up.”
I yank on a sweater and pull my hair back into a messy ponytail.
“Pull the covers over your head,” I hiss at Adam when I’m at the door.
“Why?”
“In case they’re still there!” My parents obviously know I’m not a virgin, but I really don’t feel like discussing my relationship with Adam with them. Or Ben. Or even Natalie at this point. The fact that I’m thinking this should probably be a huge red flag, but I can’t deal with that right now. I’m horny, confused, and facing a surprise morning visit from the parents without coffee. I’ve got enough troubles.
I’m so flustered when I hug them hello that I don’t even notice the grave looks on their faces. That comes later, when they’re sitting across from me in the living room. Ben and Nat must’ve gone on a speed cleaning frenzy because most of the evidence from the party is gone, or at least shoved out of sight. A stack of red solo cups on the coffee table is the only hint I can see that anyone was here last night.
“We’ve got some bad news,” my dad says gently. He and my mom are on one sofa and I’m alone on another, with Nat and Ben snuggled up on the loveseat between us.
I freeze. The cancer must be back, and it has to be bad for them to drop it on Ben right before the Olympics. I swallow a sob, knowing I have to be strong for my mom, and look around frantically for the tissues.
“I’ll stay with you,” I tell Mom. “I’ll call my boss this morning and pull out of the internship. I’ll move into the house, whatever you need.”
She and my dad exchange confused looks. “You don’t have to do that, honey,” she says gently.
“Of course, I do.” Damn it, where the hell are those tissues? “Chemotherapy is a big deal, Mom. You’ll need me.”
“Oh.” Her eyes fill with tears, and I have to look away, because it’s my job to keep it together right now. “No, sweetie. I’m so sorry. We shouldn’t have started out like that. I’m fine. The news is about something else.”
Relief floods through me and I let out the breath I was holding in a whoosh. No cancer. So why the hell are they here looking so serious?
I glance over at Ben, but he’s obviously as in the dark as I am. He shrugs and reaches for Nat’s hand and something in my chest twists, because this sofa suddenly feels huge. It’s ridiculous to feel alone when I’m in a room with my entire family and my best friend, but I have no hand to hold and it makes me sad.
“Grandma had a stroke last night,” Dad says. “It’s looking like she’ll recover, but it’s early days and these things can go downhill fast. Mom and I need to be there. We’re booked on a flight out this afternoon.”
“Shit,” Ben mutters. I feel the hot weight of tears pressing against the backs of my eyes again. My grandmother moved to Florida when I was in high school to escape the Colorado winters, but we were really close when I was younger. We started chatting quite a bit after Adam’s accident because Ben channeled his guilt by going MIA for a while, and when I was worried and didn’t want to upset my parents, I would call her. She’d talk my ear off gossiping about the ladies in her retirement community and tell me everything would be okay.
“Should I come with you?” My voice is croaky and strange, and Nat starts to untangle herself from Ben to come comfort me, but someone beats her to it. Adam. He’s barefoot, wearing his jeans and shirt from last night, and he slides onto the sofa next to me without a word. He doesn’t put his arm around me, probably because of our audience, but his warm thigh is pressed up against mine and he rests his palm on the middle of my back, solid and comforting.
“So sorry to hear about your mom, Mr. Easton,” he says. “Can I grab anybody some coffee?”
My dad gives him a head tip and a gruff “thanks, son,” but my mom bursts into tears at the sight of him.
Adam snatches his hand away from my back like my sweater just grew wooly teeth and bit him. I glance over at Ben, who shrugs.
“Mom?” I ask.
“Oh, Adam,” she sobs out. She practically throws herself over the coffee table and yanks him into a deep hug. He puts his arms around her tentatively and throws me a look of confusion over her shoulder.
“I’ll get the coffee,” Ben says. Then he gets the hell out of Dodge, the coward. Any sign of Easton women crying, and he turns to mush.
Mom calms down many awkward minutes later and smiles her thanks to Natalie, who zipped out of the room and returned with a box of tissues. Finally.
“It’s so good to see you,” she tells Adam. She reaches up and pushes his hair out of his face in the most classic mom gesture ever. “It’s been too long. Since before…” She trails off awkwardly, but Adam doesn’t leave her hanging.
“Before the crash,” he says calmly. “I think the last time was around Christmas two years ago. Here, right?”
Ben is back, coffee mugs balanced on an old skateboard deck. “It was actually in Park City,” he says. “Mom and Dad came out to watch that last competition, about a week before.”
My brother carries a lot of guilt about being able to ride when his best friend can’t. He’s worked through most of it, but I’ve still never actually heard him say “the crash” out loud.
Adam’s cheeks go red. “Right, of course. Sorry—the time around the accident is still a little fuzzy for me. They told me it might come back, but no guarantees.”
He picks up the stack of plastic cups and starts spinning the top one around, then squeezes too hard and cracks them all. Everyone looks carefully away, and Ben drops his improvised coffee tray on the table a little too fast. Liquid sloshes out of the mugs and my mom plucks tissues out of her box and starts mopping it all up.
Right. Moving on.
“Did you get me a ticket?” I ask. Adam passes me a mug and I cradle it in my hands, needing the warmth.
“You’ve got your surgery,” Dad reminds me. “We thought maybe if Syd is in town, she could take you?”
“She headed back to Boulder already. Classes are starting soon.”
It still feels strange that I won’t be there. My whole life has been about the academic calendar
and now, suddenly, I’m free.
“Right,” Dad says. He screws up his face, clearly determined to solve this puzzle for me, but I jump in.
“It’s fine. I’ll ask someone else or postpone and do it next time I’m in town.”
“I’ll stay,” Nat volunteers. “Ben and Adam can head to Mammoth and I’ll catch up with them when Piper’s all healed up. No problem.”
But it’s a problem for me, because I know how psyched Nat is to get to that writing conference. She’s playing it cool because she wants to support Ben, but I can tell she’s been wigging out about this book stuff. Talking to those other writers will be a lifeline for her, and I’m not going to be the one to wreck it.
“I love you, but you don’t have to do that,” I tell her. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll just order more contacts to take with me and do the surgery later.”
Then everyone starts talking at once, throwing out ideas and arguing, and it’s so chaotic that none of us hear Adam at first.
“I’ll stay with Piper.” He practically yells it out, which is a good strategy to shut down an Easton family brouhaha.
We all turn to him and he smiles, soft and sweet and secret, his eyes on me. “I’ll stay,” he says again. “Nat needs to go to that conference and Ben needs to be training. My contract doesn’t require me to be anywhere for a couple more weeks—I was only heading out with Ben because it was convenient.”
“Can you drive, sweetie?” Mom asks him. I shoot her a dirty look, but she ignores me.
“All cleared,” Adam tells her. “I had to take the test again, but I took care of it last summer when I visited my parents in New Hampshire.”
He turns to me. Everyone else is still talking, but I don’t hear them anymore. We’re at the eye of the storm, just the two of us. Out there, words are swirling, and arms are waving, but in here, everything is calm, and time is measured in the slow thump of my heartbeat.
“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.
He reaches over and puts his hand on mine. “I want to. Let me help you, Piper.”
Letting him help me is scarier than letting him into my bed. Hell, it’s scarier than letting him into my body. The thought of stumbling out of surgery, blind and confused and scared, and letting him be the one to see me like that should be an automatic hell no. But instead, I find myself nodding.
Adam squeezes my hand and suddenly all the noise and chaos of the room rushes back in. I put my fingers between my lips and whistle, and everyone turns to look at us. They shut up fast and their eyes go huge when they see Adam’s hand on mine. In fact, I swear to god they all blink three times in unison, like cartoon owls or something.
“It’s sorted,” I say. “Now tell us exactly what the doctor said about Grandma.”
Blink, blink, blink.
I clear my throat and they snap back to attention, and if any of them notice that Adam doesn’t let me go then, they don’t say a word.
10
Adam
Piper’s mom gets tears in her eyes every time she looks at me for the entire trip from Breckenridge to Denver. I volunteered to drive down with Ben to take them to the airport and drop Thor off with Brody in Boulder. He’s staying at Ben’s place and keeping an eye on things while everyone’s away.
Ben’s parents insisted on sitting in the back of their huge SUV, which Ben is driving, and whenever I turn around to say something, Mrs. Easton dabs her eyes and reaches forward to squeeze my shoulder. It’s sweet, but I’m probably going to have a bruise tomorrow.
“I had no idea your mom was so attached to me,” I say after we drop them off.
“She’s always loved you, dude. She even strong-armed her book club ladies to all read The Moron’s Guide to Instagram or some shit so they could all sign up and she could look at your pictures.”
“Seriously?”
He glances over. “Of course. She thinks of you as a second son, and trust me, you’re usually in the number one spot.”
“Jealous?”
“Every day and every night,” he says.
It’s bullshit of course; Ben’s mom worships him. The huge bulletin board in their kitchen is covered with so many clipped out articles about him that it looks like she’s a detective and he’s her main suspect. He’ll always be her number one, but I can’t deny that knowing she cares so much makes me feel damn good. I ran out of Colorado like my ass was on fire and at the time I had to do it, but I’ve been out there on my own so long that I forgot what a community feels like.
One of the best parts of snowboarding was having that with Ben and our friends. We trained together, traveled together, and played together. We competed, sure, but within our group it was always about beating our personal best, never about beating each other. I’ve been so focused on losing the physical part of snowboarding—about never getting to actually ride again—that I’ve forgotten the other parts of the life I miss.
“You okay over there?”
I automatically start to say “fine,” but then I shut it down. Ben’s my best friend and I can be real with him.
“I don’t really know,” I say. “Being home is a mind fuck, to be honest. Lots of memories.”
“Sorry there’s so much snowboarding shit lying around the condo. I meant to clear out the garage, but I ran out of time.”
“It’s a condo in Breckenridge and you’re a pro snowboarder, Ben. Of course there’s snowboarding shit lying around. Half of it’s mine, anyway. You don’t have to protect me from that stuff. I can handle it.”
“Can you, though?”
I would resent the hell out of that question from anyone else, but Ben’s not challenging me. He’s honestly concerned, and with good reason I guess. I have been avoiding snow like the goddamned plague.
“Yeah, I can.” I hear the surprise in my own voice, but there’s not a trace of doubt. “The initial entry sucked pretty hard, but I’m doing okay. I’ll get through the Olympics.”
Something loosens in my chest as I realize that it’s true. When I took that first breath of winter air, I was seriously one step away from jumping into a shuttle and heading straight back to the airport. I didn’t know if I was strong enough to do this, but I’ll make it.
“The Games will be tough,” I admit. “Seeing you guys in the pipe, talking about the tricks, just being back in that world, you know?”
Ben nods. “I’m there if you need me.”
“I know.” I may not remember anything about the accident or the weeks following, but from the time I opened my eyes Ben was with me. Holding the shitty protein shakes they made me drink and challenging me to finish therapy drills faster than the day before. Shaving my face when my mom complained about my beard. Reading to me for hours when my eyes wouldn’t focus.
“I think it’s going to be okay,” I tell him. “Good closure, you know? One last lap around the party to say goodbye and then I’m gone. The fact that I’ll get to watch you take out the gold is just a bonus.”
He ignores that. Superstitious fucker. “And that’s it? You wouldn’t consider moving back here?”
I stare over at him, but his gaze is fixed on the road ahead. His question sounds casual, but it could be about a bunch of shit: my name next to his on the deed for the condo; when we’ll see each other again; the fact that I spent the night wrapped up around his little sister.
Yeah, not going to address that last one while we’re in a moving vehicle.
“Not permanently,” I say. “But maybe for a couple weeks in summer, when you’re not training so hard. We could hang out then, or you could come meet me wherever I end up. I met a cool guy on the Gold Coast who said he was headed to a little French island to work at an English bookstore and I told him I’d come check it out. Nat would love it.”
He looks at me again, and his jaw gets tight. Whatever I said was not what he wanted to hear, apparently. “Brody talk to you at all about his movie?”
“We’ve discussed it a few times. He’s been calling me the past few day
s. But the funding situation is still not good, so he doesn’t know if it’ll happen.”
Brody used to ride with us, and he was one step down from me when they put that medal on my neck four years ago, but then he quit and started making movies in the backcountry. Mostly crazy guys riding impossible lines. He’s hardcore: the guy will camp out on a glacier for a month waiting for the perfect day to ride some spine he spotted from the air. After I got hurt he visited a few times and decided to make a movie that showed the other part of extreme sports: the part where you fuck yourself up so bad you never ride again, or, if you do, it’s after years of surgeries and physical therapy.
The problem? None of his sponsors want to pay for that kind of movie.
Turns out I’m kind of a downer.
“Would you agree to be on camera if he finds the money?”
“I guess. I told him I didn’t want to carry the whole thing, you know? But I said I’d make an appearance. I don’t wanna be famous as the guy with the gnarly head injury. That’s not how I want to be remembered.”
“What about being behind the camera?”
Ah. I get it now. Ben’s not grinding his molars to dust because he’s pissed I might have slept with his sister, he’s feeling me out about Brody’s suggestion that I join his film crew. But that’s not going happen.
“I mean, how many followers have you got on Instagram now?” His tone is urgent, and I can tell he’s thought about this a lot. Ben would deny it to his dying breath, but Piper’s not the only Easton who gets off on solving people’s problems for them.
“Counting your mom and her book club ladies?”
“Yes, smart ass. Counting them.”
“A decent amount, I guess, but I haven’t posted anything since I’ve been back.”
I haven’t even unpacked my camera. Haven’t seen anything I wanted to photograph, except Piper. Maybe I’ll dig out my stuff when I get back up to Breck, see if I can capture her the way I saw her this morning: rosy warm and mussed-up sexy. Laughing in bed. One perfect memory to take with me when I go.